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Counter UAS in Action Protecting U S Borders from Unmanned Threats - Part 2

• Homeland Security & Defense Forum

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Hear how C-UAS technology is being utilized to mitigate risks posed by unmanned threats to help protect critical infrastructure and national security.

This episode explores the evolving landscape of aerial ports and drone regulations, focusing on how technology and policy collaborate to enhance airspace management. The discussion also highlights the need for industry involvement to address noncompliance and security challenges, all while considering citizen rights and the future of unmanned aviation.

  • Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP
  • Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security 
  • Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol
  • David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator)

 This discussion took place at the HSDF’s Border Security Symposium on December 11th, 2024.

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• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

Shifts a little bit from the threat to legitimate trade and travel right. So private industry is already driving in certain areas. How are we going to move cargo, people and things across the border legitimately? Right? So we're going to need to employ the same type of detection, tracking and let's not call it mitigation, maybe we call it course correction. Right, if you're legitimately flying a package of cargo across the border through an aerial port of entry and you inadvertently veer off course you know we're going to need to be able to correct you and put you back on course to ensure safety of the national airspace. So this problem just snowballs and continues to go. It is the small three things I mentioned earlier that we're worried about. But here in the next several years we're going to see aerial ports of entry, we're going to see containers being moved across the border right, to avoid long lines at the port of entry. All that is going to come and we need to be prepared, you know, on this detection side of the house and course correction side, to take care of it.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

Aerial ports of entry.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

Yeah, I think that might be an opportunity to. I think that'll definitely be an opportunity to apply AI in that as well, because I suspect when you're talking about creating a small UAS doing cross border delivery, legitimate commercial deliveries, you're going to end up having to create some type of airways, just like we create roadways going through a port of entry, and so then, once you do that, you've created a system where, hey, if you're here, you're right, if you're here, you're wrong. And having computer-based learning or AI be able to decipher that volume of traffic more so than a human being looking at a scope, I think is going to be required.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

Steve, how does that come into the influencing and shaping policy and regulations relative to policy and regulations relative to, for example, an aerial port of entry or the massive amounts of flights that the Amazons of the world are going to be doing? How do you take that into account and what can industry do in any form or fashion to help shape or influence that?

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

Yeah, I think EAC Miller got to this a bit in his comment. You know we need there has to be some sort of foundational understanding of the airspace out there, unmanned, the same way that we have for manned. Right now you can open up FlightAware and look at every manned you know aircraft that's broadcasting ADS-B out there across the world, across the nation, in your backyard, right, you can look up and say, oh, look, there's a plane and in real time de-conflict it with a known flight and tail number and various information. We need that same level of integrity for unmanned flights, especially on the commercial side, that we'd have for manned aviation right now, and all of that will help us de-conflict those flights that are authorized, that are supposed to be there, with those that aren't, with those that are not complying with the rules. You know all of this builds around the conversation and the collaboration that we have to have with the FAA on a regular basis as far as who has the right to the airspace and FAA as an integrator, as a regulator. You know their position is everybody has a right to the airspace and we would agree with that. And of course, we encourage the integration of these drones into the airspace, compliantly.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

And what we've seen is there's a culture of noncompliance within the recreational users here domestically, the recreational users here domestically, and there's a intentional noncompliance right for those that are out there doing nefarious work south of the border, within the homeland and, you know, abroad in theater, and being able to have that baseline understanding of who's supposed to be there, who's authorized to fly in these routes, in these airways, you know, coming through this aerial port of entry, if that's where we end up and saying hey, there's 12 drones flying in this space right now. Ten of them I've already deconflicted and know that they're supposed to be there, but there's two that I have a concern with, right, and I can focus my limited manpower and resources on going after those two and understanding what they're doing, why they're there, what the intent is, versus having to look at all 12 and say I've got a real problem but I can only address a couple with my limited resources. And so having that baseline understanding of the airspace, working collaboratively with the FAA, to say here is a national level, look at the airspace, here are all the systems that are broadcasting remote ID, which is a baseline requirement for every drone activity in the United States right now, compliance levels are not where we would like them to be and, of course, we look at that as an immediate red flag from a law enforcement standpoint. Right, if you're not compliant with the baseline regulations, then I want to know more about you, right, I want to follow you, I want to see where you're going.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

And it's just part of a normal law enforcement response to hey, if you're speeding on the roadway, it's possible you're breaking other rules. Right, and again, that's an oversimplification of the explanation that I'm getting at. But again, all of that plays into our ability to deconflict the airspace in real time, in a matter of seconds, where you have a decision to determine if this thing is a threat or not to your personnel or to your assets. So I think that's where we need to get to. There's a long road to get there and I think we're trending in the right direction with with some of these rules, some of these partnerships. But you know, cbp will be a huge benefactor of a deconflicted and collaborated airspace, in the aerial ports of entry, for example, and the massive what we used to call the threat in the mix.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

At our ports of entry, land ports of entry and airports there's a massive amount of inflow, but within that the threats are mixed in. Those are the ones that we're concerned about. So are we already looking at that from a regular perspective? Because right now it seems that every time we talk about regulations or exploration, it's about what's happening on the border. Critically important. But very quickly we're going to be faced with this other aerial port of entry threat. I mean, are we going to have a CT PET for aerial ports of entry?

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

I mean, I think we're not there yet, but we're at the foundational point where folks are starting to look at these more advanced operations and the integrated use of commercial drones for deliveries, for inspections of critical infrastructure, whatever it may be, and we look at rules that are on the docket for consideration.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

There's a beyond visual line of sight rule for anybody that's in the unmanned drone space. Right, this is the ability for commercial operators to fly their drones consistently beyond visual line of sight, which is currently not allowed. Right, this is a game changer as far as how we in law enforcement are getting after the individual who's responsible for a potential illicit or nefarious activity. If you're not within line of sight of that drone, I have infinitely more challenges getting after you to do my normal law enforcement response to interdict, to engage and determine intent, all of which help part of that investigative kill chain or process, whatever it may be and so ensuring that security partners and stakeholders in this space are contributing to those rules as they come out from. You know, our safety regulator is going to be critical and I think again, setting this up for success in that more advanced culture downstream will be very important with again laying the foundation in these early rules.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

Yeah, I have to wonder, I think I think can you all hear me all right? Okay, I know I've seen Al Gina here. John Wagner was here earlier, diane Sabatino was here earlier. Wagner was here earlier, diane Sabatino was here earlier. I have to wonder if we are taking into account from the CBP perspective, the port of the future. That includes this kind of situation, because the bad guys are always going to look for the opportunities to mix in with a legitimate trade and traffic, trade and travel trade and traffic cargo and things of that nature. So again I pose that question to industry what should we be looking at from the outside to support that future evolution of what we're facing today? Ac Miller, the domain awareness and security architecture we talked about it a little bit over there. Would you give us a sense of the direction we're going on that?

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

Yeah, so you know, like I said, we are systematically taking a look at our current radar architecture across all of our borders, architecture across all of our borders and, like we said, historically that's been a blend of our own radars, whether they're on the ground, they're on a tethered aerostat, they're on a tower.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

We integrate FAA radars we integrate other radars from other components into an intersecting picture of domain awareness for everything. Now looking at threat areas and now folding in those meter or less targets that can either, you know, be detected by RF signal or active radar or both. That's kind of where we're at and you know, like any projects we're prioritizing.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

We're looking at it we're working with the board of control and saying, hey, where are we going to start? That's kind of how we started this out Knock out the highest threat areas, test, see what works, see what doesn't, see how the threats react and move on and build and evolve. And, like I said, it is not a cookie cutter approach. Every single sector or AOR requires kind of different tuning to optimize that domain awareness. You know, and it's domain awareness that you know you talk about we had, you know, 45,000 detections in FY24 alone. A significant amount of those never crossed the border, you know. So that's your, your reconnaissance and your surveillance. So, you know, not only building out our architecture but enabling our partners in Mexico to have kind of the capabilities to do detections and mitigations on these small UAS that never crossed the border 45,000 detections.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

We have to ask ourselves what were those platforms supporting from a criminal activity? And that's what we're facing on these boards. And that's the detections. Then there's dark ones that we didn't see, the ones that we can't see. So we've got about 10 more minutes to go. Let me ask three participants here what would you ask of industry to focus on going forward to assist in the fight? You've covered some of these areas, but if there was a top two thing that you would ask, what would you ask from them? And assistance.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

Proprietary systems don't help. Proprietary systems don't help and proprietary systems don't help. It's very helpful if we could take new technology and have it integrate with all of our systems. So the goal, as unlikely as it is, is a single piece of glass in terms of domain awareness and having different proprietary systems that require different monitors and different systems doesn't help us out, so I would offer that consideration.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

Of course we look at these things because they're great technology. Systems doesn't help us out, so I would offer that consideration. You know, of course we look at these things because they're great technology, but it creates an added level of complexity when we're trying to put it all together.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

Okay, cliff, kind of a hardware and software, I guess side for me. So to go along with that and the proprietary equipment. There is no single solution for counter right. You mentioned all the different sensor modalities, from radars to cameras, to acoustics, to RF stuff. So I said it earlier, kind of think of CBP different. When it comes to the defeat capability in particular, we're not the same as.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

DOD. We're operating domestically and we have this law enforcement hat on, so we want to let legal folks fly, but we also need to be watching them to make sure. Like Steve kind of made the comparison with cars and speeding, right, we have to monitor the air traffic and very selectively, pull people out of that and say, hey, you're doing something wrong. Right. So from a hardware perspective, how do we do this and not be so invasive? Right, with all the civil rights and civil liberties concerns and the way everyone wants to fly drones, we want to enable that. But we also need the ability to reach up and touch you if we need to. So a lot of the solutions we're presented are hey, I got this cool laser or I got this thing that's going to make that go boom or fall down. It's just not applicable in our environment, right? So, from the hardware perspective, think about us a little different than you do a lot of the duty folks. And then on the software side, I know there's a lot of AI discussions and a lot of data folks here that are way smarter than I on this topic, but that's can't be emphasized enough with this, both right now and when we get to the aerial ports of entry.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

As Steve mentioned, we're going to have to combine all this data and make sense of it. So much data in real time that we're going to have to sort through and figure out what's the top 5% of things I need to pay attention to and what else can I ignore. Right? So there's thresholds, there's risk, there's everything we need to build into that. But right now, even if we're asked how many drones crossed the border last night, you know we have six, eight, 10, 20 different counter UAS sensors along the border from y'all and none of them talk to each other. So we have to add all this stuff up individually ourselves, remove duplicative flights and try to make sense of the data. It's a very difficult task now, let alone when we add more sensors and airports of entry in the future. So kind of that hardware solution think of it as different. And software side, you know there's a lot of work to be done and what all that includes I don't know. That's not my area of expertise, but it's definitely a problem set we're coming up on very fast, okay.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

Steve, I'll take the hot take for the panel here. Enough with RF. Right, rf is the past. Right, it will remain. People will still continue to use it. Right, that is not the threat of tomorrow and we need to be researching and testing against the threat of tomorrow. We're already seeing it in Ukraine, in the Middle East Right, they're not even flying drones with wireless connections anymore. They're connecting fiber optic cables Right, and flying without, without a wireless connection Right. How do we, how do we deal with that? Right, and those are the questions that we need to be looking at.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

I think, moving forward, rf will persist and will be the mainstay for recreational users, for the general off-the-shelf products, but I care less about those and more about how folks are using the new technology, the new innovations, to perpetrate their criminal activity, whatever it may be.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

So don't stop working with RF, but let's turn the corner to figuring out ways to reconfigure those radars to be able to detect radar. Get those cross sections down to where we can have a great detection rate for drones deconflicted with birds and other biologics right. Let's look at acoustics or EOIR cameras that are capable of slewing and cueing to a radar hit to another. You know detection and can help you put eyes on a target and determine what threat level you need to be concerned with right. Those are the things that I think we're looking at and they're really the evolutions of the technology that's evolved over the last 20 years but is now, you know, on a new, you know, evolution timeframe of about six to eight weeks in these conflict zones where they are coming up with new measures and countermeasures and evolutions to the tech on that two-month iteration scale. So that would be my encouragement.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

I had never heard that Enough on RF, but that makes all the sense in the world, exactly. Any questions from the audience Right here, please.

Audience:

Thank you.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

Where does the US?

Audience:

citizen fit in all this. So some thoughts that like do we have incidents with citizens shooting down drones at this point With things happening in Jersey the other night, you know, these things come to my mind, like how much space does an American citizen own above his house before he or she can take action against a drone? And with the number of drones that are coming over the southern border, I would expect some people are like, hey, why don't I just start having fun and start shooting some of these out of the sky? So kind of, where's the talk, where the citizen actually sits in these conversations?

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

I mean, you know, from from our perspective, and you know my deputy was on the Hill testifying with the Maritime Transportation Subcommittee. You know, I think you know these events, you know, like what's happened in New Jersey, it's, you know, unintended consequence. It gets Congress talking, you know, and it starts to hit the gas on, you know, pushing these initiatives. It starts to hit the gas on pushing these initiatives and, on the flip side, I think we can increase and start taking more seriously the penalties for violators, whether they're just careless or even the criminal, even the careless ones. We need to up the penalties for these people.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

So you know so so they know we're taking this serious and we view this as a national security threat.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

I would just add you know, the the definition of airspace is technically an inch off the ground, right, if you jump, you're momentarily in the airspace, right, and that's again, that's a broad interpretation of what we're talking about here. But you know, the legal response is if you take a bat to a drone in your backyard, whether or not it's, you know, doing something criminal or not, right, you've committed aircraft sabotage. Right. Now is somebody going to prosecute you for that? Yeah, we'll leave that up, you know, for your own imagination, but that's the definition that we are working against here. Right, all of these drones have a right to the airspace so long as they are compliant with the regulations you know, incumbent upon, whatever, however they're operating, whether that's commercially or recreationally. Now, there are local statutes and you know jurisdictions that have implemented certain laws that say, well, you can't fly a drone for the purposes of conducting other criminal activity, whether that's voyeurism or trespassing, or conveyance, whatever it is. But again, that's only at a local level and that is very inconsistent across the nation. Right, and so you know, we look at.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

Well, didn't really want to go here, but we'll, you know, we'll look at New Jersey, right, there's not a lot of illegal actions going on, right, and you know people can fly drones at night. It's allowed right now, and police departments and other institutions are also flying their own drones to find out what these other drones are right. And so suddenly you have people reporting blue drones, right. They're like, oh my God, there's this thing in my backyard. Well, it's just the New Jersey State Troopers doing their thing. And so it gets really complicated really fast, and we don't want to dismiss any of these circumstances for what they are, and it's possible that there is nefarious or illicit activity ongoing, but without that framework that I mentioned earlier, without that understanding of who's in the airspace and whether or not they're supposed to be there, this will continue to occur.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

Okay, gentlemen, thank you very much. Appreciate it Complex, challenging, difficult, and we need the help from industry. Thank you again.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

Appreciate it. Thank you, steve Thanks.